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Prominent novelist Michael Peterson was convicted in 2003 of beating his wife to death with a fireplace poker, but he, assisted by a former neighbor, has maintained since then that she was killed by a rogue owl.

In 2008, for the first time, North Carolina state investigators acknowledged that a microscopic feather was indeed found in her hair, and in December 2011, Durham County Judge Orlando Hudson granted Peterson a new trial.

Although several owl experts have declared that the wife's head trauma was consistent with an owl attack, the judge's decision was based instead on a finding last year that the state crime lab had mishandled evidence in 34 cases and specifically that an investigator in the Peterson case had exaggerated his credentials to the jury. (A 2007 fictionalized movie and a 2006 NBC "Dateline" also gave durability to the owl theory.) [MSNBC, 12-14-2011]

Traditional bridge replacement on as prominent a highway as Interstate 15 in Mesquite, Nev., has generally required rerouting traffic for as long as a year, but the new "accelerated" technology in January necessitated detours for less than a week.

Excited engineers traveled in from around the country to watch the old bridge be demolished and the new one (which had been built on a platform off to the side) be slid into place using hydraulic jacks and Teflon-coated metal beams -- lubricated with Dawn dishwashing detergent to glide them smoothly into the old frame.

The Nevada Department of Transportation estimated that the accelerated process saved commuters about $12 million in time and fuel costs. [Las Vegas Sun, 1-11-2012]